


Foggy Evenings We Have Known

by Ari (wisdomeagle)



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Magic, Names, Studying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/Ari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tris takes a study break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foggy Evenings We Have Known

**Author's Note:**

> Written for que_sera

 

 

The room was small and cramped and smelled faintly of rotting medicinal herbs, and it was filled from floor to ceiling with neat stacks of books, held in place by gentle ropes of wind that prevented them from toppling onto the red, braided head of the room's sole inhabitant. The door was rigged in the traditional style with water set to unleash its wrath on trespassers, but Trisana's water needed no bucket. It hovered by the door in a gentle cloud and sometimes came to rest near her.

Tris was reading. Her nose was scrunched, her eyes were bleary, her head ached, and her muscles were tense knots from sitting in the same spot so long. This was so usual that she hardly felt the discomfort, but when a sudden voice broke into her studies, she welcomed the interruption.

"Why don't you work in the library?" her friend Briar asked through the mental vines that connected their thoughts. "Be less painful there."

"For my head, maybe," Tris retorted, closing her eyes to the words on the page (qualities of metal alloys -- it made her think of Daja, faraway, out of reach even of her strongest wind magic). "Not the rest of me."

"Making enemies already?"

"I don't like academic mages," Tris said, settling into the familiarity of their connection, wet and green and growing, vines tangling with each other in their eagerness to reach the sun. "At all."

"Not even Niko?"

"Niko's different," Tris said. "He's _seen_. Most of these people -- they're just kids, Briar. Plucked from perfectly ordinary lives by magic testers and sent to Lightsbridge to learn control before returning to their ordinary lives, without knowing anything beyond what's written in books or visible right next door."

"And?"

"And I don't need more control!" Tris told him, producing as evidence the lightning that wanted to escape from her at the thought of coddled baby mages who learned their ABCs at a stage when Tris had learned her magic from harsher tutors -- earthquakes, storms, wildfires. "I need to learn _why_ things work. I need to find a way to make _this_ " --- she let a spark of lightning go free, arching out of its braid into her hand, where she cuddled it and let it grow before returning it to its place -- "make sense in the real world. If I wanted to tell weather fortunes or sell winds to Traders, I could, but that's not -- that's no better than the laziest mage here. They only want money and fame. And _ease_."

"We've already got the fame," Briar remarked, coolly, and Tris felt some of the old difference between them, the remnants of his one-time poverty that made him feel hunger more acutely and prevented him from devaluing the worth of gold.

"Why're you bothering me anyhow, Briar Moss? I've got heaps of _studying_ to do, if you can't see it." She wanted him distracted from the subject of money, and perhaps reminded of the things _she_ could do that he couldn't, or wouldn't. Barb for barb, and they were even.

"Through your eyes it's all glittery," Briar said, lightly. "Thought maybe you'd found some new kind of gold. But it's just your old books."

"They're worth plenty of gold, if you must know."

"I wanted to ask you how the name-choosing was going?"

Tris had had plenty of time to regret confiding to Briar, the last time they'd been home at Winding Circle, that she was struggling with the privilege that mages were given, to chose their own name, one that expressed in a word all their skills and interests. Briar had chosen his name earlier than most, abandoning the rude nickname he'd worn as a thief, and she'd hoped he might have some input, but he'd only shrugged. "My name chose me, pricked my hands and cradled my head and I couldn't well pick anything else, could I? And I had to choose in a hurry, let me tell you. Niko didn't let me waste time weighing the options and thinking too hard."

Tris would've asked her teachers, even Niko himself, but it seemed -- too personal, for any who didn't share the connection she had with her fellows and friends, with Briar and Sandry and Daja. And neither of the girls bore a name they hated, a reminder of a family who'd forsaken them. Only Trisana, an unwanted Chandler, and Roach, who'd become Briar years ago.

"You thinking, Coppercurls? Could go with that, huh? Coppercurls? Sounds like a mage to me."

"Sounds like Daja to me. I don't work copper, unless you'd forgotten."

"Seems to me you work whatever you set your mind to."

"Well that's just it, isn't it? Here people specialize, deep as they can in some... ridiculous, arcane magic, like... fine carving in silver, or binding potions, or conjuring in light, any dozen silly things they can think of. No one looks at the whole picture, and no one thinks of the Living Circle, of the way life's tied to decay, the way... growth's tied to rain and wind, or how cotton's grown, then spun, then worn and then worn out."

"You're the one who was all over itching to go away and study."

"And _change_ things," she said. "Things've just got to change, Briar, in me, in Lightsbridge, in all Emelan, or we'll all go mad. You've seen magic-madness and it's not pleasant."

"So your life's work's treating insane magicians. Fair enough."

"No, it's _not_ , and it's not fair, that no one else is even _thinking_ , that we've all this power and no way to use it. Perhaps I'll be like Niko, and find ambient mages all over the world, teach them control without binding their powers into singularity and uselessness."

"And perhaps they'll all kill themselves when they see who they've got for a teacher. Think again, Coppercurls."

"I'm _thinking_ ," Tris protested, and let out a deep breath, automatically counting seven.

Briar breathed in to the same count, and then they held together, seven. Out, seven. In, seven. Tris had been meditating so long it was part of her body, to breathe with her brother, to let his thoughts and feelings and magic flow through her the way hers did, to feel the way briers curled around his arms, the way creeping moss felt, soft under his feet. Her lips twisted into a smile.

"Well, there's no other name for _you_ , anyhow, Briar. Maybe I'll know when it comes, like -- like a flash of lightning."

"Yes, something like," Briar said, a little anxious. "I'd best go. Now, _Rosethorn_. There's no other name in any language that would suit her better, is there?"

Tris laughed, and let the connection dwindle to a pleasant background fragrance, a bit of freshness in the rot of her last experiment, a bit of green in her crackling, electric world. She summoned her cloud, let it rest on her hair and frizz her braids with damp for a moment. 

"No need to decide right away." Her teachers all said the same, promised that there would be many years of study in between this moment and the moment when she'd have to declare herself _Raincloud_ or _Sunstorm_ or _Thunderbolt_. Plenty of time to decide, plenty of time to learn, plenty of time to know.

 


End file.
